Advertising over the Internet continues to grow, and more businesses are allocating increasing financial resources to attract consumers over the Internet. One way to advertise over the Internet is for search engines, such as Google (www.google.com), Yahoo (www.yahoo.com), Gopher, Dogpile, Ask Jeeves, Alta Vista, and others, is to display listings associated with words, known as keywords, in a priority order.
Each keyword is typically associated with a listing, to a web site or web page (referred to collectively in this section as a “web site”) of a web site promoter (owner, controller, or other party associated with a web site), and typically, multiple listings for individual web sites of corresponding web site promoters. Each of the web site promoters has agreed to pay the search engine a monetary amount for that keyword, when a user enters the keyword, receives the listings, as generated by the search engine, and typically provided to the user in a graphical user interface (GUI) or other similar on-screen display, and the user then activates or “clicks” their pointing device, or mouse, on the desired listing. The user's browser is directed to the target web site, associated with the specific web site promoter. The “click” may be recorded, as well as the “click through”, when the user's browser has reached the targeted web site of the web site promoter.
The web site promoter, willing to pay the most amount of money for a user's pointing device or mouse click on a listing associated with the web site promoter, such that the user's browser is directed to a targeted web site associated with the web site promoter, is usually provided with the first or top priority listing for the particular key word, of the listings generated in an on-screen display. This advertising technique is commonly known as pay per click (PPC) advertising.